Determining the true cost of war
March 10, 2006 07:02 AM /
Capitol Hillbillies
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By DALE McFEATTERS
In a small, but symbolically significant move, the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, Judd Gregg. R-N.H., is considering treating the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as a regular budget item.
The Bush administration has spent $440 billion so far on those wars, $120 billion of it this fiscal year, and the meter is running at the rate of $4.5 billion a month in Iraq and $800 million a month in Afghanistan.
The wars have been funded in a series of five emergency spending measures. The emergency bills, as their name implies, are intended to deal with sudden, unexpected and short-term emergencies like Katrina. The bills are passed outside the regular appropriations process and are carried off budget, which, while completely transparent, tends to minimize the apparent cost.
. Gregg would begin by capping the amount for the wars that could be funded through the emergency process. The rest would be treated as a regular expenditure.
Recall that the war in Iraq especially was to be short and cheap. Bush economic advisor Lawrence Lindsey was openly derided by his White House colleagues when he predicted in 2002 that the war might cost up to $200 billion.
Gregg's proposal is mostly bookkeeping, but what it means is that rather than an emergency expense of finite duration, that wars will be treated for budget purposes as routine, regular, reoccurring expenditures.
(Contact Dale McFeatters at McFeattersD(at)SHNS.com.
© Copyright
2006 by Capitol Hill Blue
Comments
This is one of the most callous and insane 'budgeting' plans imaginable. Does this mean that the American taxpayers are supposed to put Wars into our budget as a Regular and planned for thing...like other things that our Government is supposed to be responsible for ? Surely we do have enough sense to see that this Administration has exactly that in mind...and has...from even before 9/11. Wake up, people. and let your Senators and Representatives know that you do not support such a grotesque idea. They may be pea-brained enough to actually see nothing wrong with such an idea. Sitting in plush seats for hours sometimes addles ones' brains.The key words are " REGULAR budget item." WAR should never be treated as a 'Regular budget item.'
VJS
Posted by vera sanborn at March 10, 2006 03:51 PM
I could be wrong, but I was assuming that Sen. Gregg was proposing this as a way to amplify the reality of the cost of Bush's unnecessary war; rather than make war a regular part of government function. Lest it be forgotten, what is now the DoD, once was called the Department of War. Which at least was truth in advertising, but still creepy all the same.
Posted by Gorbe at March 10, 2006 04:45 PM
I think what he was trying to do is to make it a regular budget item, thus exposing it to increased oversight and scrutiny. The presidential blank check for the War on Terrrrr needs to be curtailed.
Posted by rickrocket at March 11, 2006 09:40 AM
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